


Fragile (But Unbreakable)

by milkyway



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Derek and Stiles are Mates, Derek is Stiles' Anchor, Domestic Derek and Stiles, Established Relationship, Feels, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marriage, Mates, Medical, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 22:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2709179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkyway/pseuds/milkyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek wishes he could save Stiles from anything that could hurt him.<br/>But there are some things he can't protect.</p>
<p>Or, the one where Stiles gets appendicitis and has to be rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, and Derek nearly falls apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile (But Unbreakable)

Stiles is bent over the bowl, gasping,retching, shivering.

He’d first thought it was flu, but the gnawing pain in his right side had escalated slowly as the evening wore on, until it seared across his whole flank and abdomen.

“What’s wrong?” Derek says, running to the bathroom, eyes wide in terror at seeing his mate’s anguish. He’d been in a deep sleep, but when his wolf sensed Stiles’s pain, he’d surfaced immediately.

“God, Derek, I’m not sure… but I think it’s my appendix. I’ve just puked my guts out and the pain is fucking awful.”

“Oh, shit.” Derek grabs Stiles’s arm, and instantly senses the throbbing ache holding Stiles ransom. He shudders as he takes the pain away. Stiles’s breathing slows, deepens.

“Better?”

Stiles gets up slowly and nods, wiping the corner of his mouth.

“I thought you smelled sick.”

“Duh,” Stiles manages, walking to the basin to splash his face with cold water. “I’ve just vomited.”

“No, I meant I picked it up earlier. You know I can smell it when humans are unwell.”

“Ugh. What do I smell like?”

“Sour. Like vinegar. And you’re running hot. We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

“Shit. Yes.”

“Go lie down,” says Derek. “I’ll pack you a bag. I’ll call the emergency room so long.”

“Thanks,” Stiles mumbles, before another wave of nausea attacks him and he runs to the bowl to puke again, gasping with pain as his whole body convulses.

 

*

 

Derek speeds through the streets of Beacon Hills in the Camaro like it’s the end of the world.

“Whoah,” Stiles groans. “I’m not about to die.”

“Be quiet, Stiles. My mate is sick. Save your energy.”

Everybody rushes to attention when they see one of their own being wheeled in by a frantic looking Derek.

“Dr Stilinski!” says the head nurse on shift. “Dr Rogers is ready.”

Ann Rogers, who is one of Stiles’s classmates from Stanford, takes one look at Stiles and knows that something is seriously wrong. As she feels his plank-hard abdomen she finds all the signs of peritonitis.

“Stiles,” she says gently, “we’ need to prep you for surgery. I’m calling Vince Andersen to come through from Hill Valley, he’s one of the best surgeons I know.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. He’s become pale, and his heart rate has spiked to 160. Derek clutches his mate’s hand, leaching the pain away as surreptitiously as he can.

“Is he going to be all right?” Derek says. The werewolf looks helpless, afraid.

“He’ll be in good hands, Derek.”

“Don’t fret, Sourwolf,” Stiles manages, as Ann pops a second IV into his arm to give him more fluid.

 

*  
Two hours later, Vince Andersen removes a ragged, burst appendix, washing out a good pint of pus in Stiles’s abdomen. All the while, Derek paces up and down the corridors outside the OR. He’s never felt so terrified; the thought of Stiles in pain… ill… spikes his heart like an icicle, so that he can hardly breathe. He knows it’s relatively simple surgery, that Stiles is young and strong. But still… Derek’s lost too many loved ones in his life…

He prays to a God he’s not sure exists, hoping, waiting…

At just after two in the morning, a sweaty Vince walks into the waiting room, pulling off his mask and theatre cap.

“Doctor!” Derek gasps. 

“He’s going to be fine,” says the surgeon, and Derek nearly collapses with relief. “Burst appendix, and he’s got peritonitis, but with antibiotics and painkillers he’ll make a quick recovery.”

It is all Derek can do to not start crying.

Uncharacteristically for him, the surgeon walks up to the anguished werewolf and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, bro, it’s going to be okay. He’s in recovery now with the anaesthesiologist, he’ll be up in the ward soon.”

“Recovery? Where’s that?”

“Sir, you can’t go through there… wait…”

Derek runs into the OR complex.

“Let him,” Melissa McCall says, who’s materialised seemingly from nowhere.

“Hey Melissa. What are you doing here?”

“Derek phoned my son Scott. As you know, Stiles is practically my kid.”

“Is that his husband?”

Melissa nods. “Yes. Derek Hale.”

“He looked as if Stiles had died or something.”

“That’s true love for you. Now let me run into the OR suite before Derek contaminates something.”

The anaesthesiologist is seriously considering giving his patient’s frantic husband a sedative. Derek grips Stiles’s hand tightly. Stiles is barely awake, groggy, talking gibberish.

“It’s okay, Derek,” says Melissa, grabbing his shoulder. 

“Hey, Melissa,” says the werewolf, flushed. 

“He’s going to make a complete recovery. Now get out of here, you can see him in the ward.”

Derek nods. He feels an urgent need to wolf out and run in the forest to clear his head, because the fear and the worry are still raging inside.

Derek doesn’t like being out of control.

He wants to protect Stiles from everything. But today, he clearly can’t.

And this crushes him.

 

The brunet sleeps, head slumped on the foot of the bed in which Stiles is dozing. The saturation monitor bleeps steadily at 98% and 74 beats per minute. Safe. Normal. Stiles breathes deeply, sighs, and opens his eyes.

“Wha…? Derek?”

“Stiles!” Derek says, eyes snapping open. He reaches over, strokes his mate’s cheek.

“Hey Sourwolf.” Stiles smacks his lips, they’re dry. His throat hurts from where they put the endotracheal tube, his side aches dully. “You been here the whole time?”

“Of course. Thank God you’re okay.”

“Jeez, Derek. Stop worrying so much, okay? I’m human. Humans get sick sometimes.”

“I should have… I should have realised it earlier… made you go to the doctor sooner…”

“Derek, for God’s sake. I’m not completely fragile, sillywolf.”

A nurse walks into the room. “Everything alright? Oh, look who’s up. You alright, hon?”

“I’m okay, thanks,” Stiles croaks.

“Want something for the pain?”

Stiles glances at Derek, and smiles. “I think I’ll be okay for now.” The werewolf grabs his mate’s arm, and takes the pain away, so that a delicious drowsiness overcomes the brunet; he can hardly keep his eyes open. 

“I need to… to sleep…”

Stiles is out like a light again, drifting on a cloud of morphine and residual anaesthetic and wolf endorphins. He dreams of forests, of wolves running, of floating on top of a deep blue ocean.

When he wakes, Derek is still there.

Stiles stretches, and yawns.

“Morning,” says the werewolf. Derek looks gaunt, hair dishevelled, bags under his eyes. 

“Morning, love. Jeez. You look worse than I do, I bet.”

Derek huffs. “Had to stay. Make sure you were all right.”

Stiles smiles and rolls his eyes. “Lord, I’m in a fucking hospital. Surrounded by staff. And I’m a doctor too. Der, I love you very very much, but please go home and take a shower.”

“On one condition,” Derek says after a pause.

“Yes?” says Stiles, looking down and realising with dismay that he’s been catheterised. Oh, the embarrassment of having your colleagues shove a pipe up your urethra as you lie naked and unconscious on a steel table…

“I give you your sponge bath.”

“You’re adorable,” says Stiles. “Does this mean I get jello and custard when I get discharged?”

“Yes. And we can watch any movies you like.”

“What, Derek Hale is giving me control of the remote?”

Derek nods. “Tell the rest of the pack and I’ll deck you.”

“Whatever, Sourwolf, whatever. Go get a basin and a flannel.”

*

It’s been four days, and Stiles is back to his normal self, except for the wound that’s still healing. It hurts a bit when he pees and coughs, but the stitches will come out soon. The scar will be hardly noticeable, being in the crease of his groin. 

Derek fusses over the wound, cleaning it, changing the dressings obsessively, even sniffing the inflamed area.

“Unless you want to seduce me, stop sniffing my crotch, Fido,” Stiles says, giggling, as they lie on the bed in the afternoon sunlight.

“Just making sure you’re safe.”

“I’ve been on fucking triple antibiotics. I’ve got Vicodin. I just had an appendicectomy, Derek, not a heart transplant.”

“They cut you. With a knife.”

“Yes, and if they didn’t, I could really have died. I’ve seen septicaemia, Derek, it’s not something I’d want on my worst enemy. But that’s why we have modern medicine. I’ve done at least fifty appendicectomies myself, love, they’re really uncomplicated most of the time. The worst part for me was actually the friggin catheter.”

Derek squirms reflexively. “I can’t imagine having that done. That part of you is…”

“Yours and yours only,” says Stiles, ruffling Derek’s hair. “Don’t worry, Sourwolf.”

“Damn right,” Derek replies, almost in a bark.

“I need more Jello,” says Stiles. 

“Coming right up.”

“If I knew I were going to be spoilt like this, I would have burst my appendix much sooner.”

“Stop that.”

“Can I have a foot rub, maybe?” Stiles says hopefully.

“Only if you shut up and get some rest.”

“Fine. As long as you’re next to me. I want to be held a bit.”

“That part is non-negotiable.”

Later, drifting off to sleep, a lightness descends on Derek as he holds Stiles, his strong arms wrapped around his mate in the most protective of gestures. He knows he’s always going to panic when Stiles is sick; when anybody in his pack is hurt. 

But these turmoils are part of marriage and a life together, he realises. Things break sometimes, but they can be put back together. Life is messy. And glorious. And wonderful.

As Stiles snores softly, Derek prays softly. Thank you. Thank you for keeping him safe. I couldn’t. But You did.

Then he’s asleep, dreaming, like his mate, of the forest and the ocean again.


End file.
